The shortlist for BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2007 was announced last night. I'm really pissed off with this, mainly because David Healy is more or less ignored.

Nominees were apparently selected based on votes from news papers, all of whom failed to deem Sir David worthy of a mention with the exception of the Belfast Telegraph (naturally) and Nuts magazine (fair play lads).

Imagine Wayne Rooney had broken the record for goals scored in qualifying. Now imagine he'd done that fronting an England team that began the campaign ranked 72nd in the world instead of 5th. Do you think he would have been ignored?

The full list reads:

• Joe Calzaghe (considered Welsh but born in London)
• Lewis Hamilton (English; abandoned the UK for a more tax-efficient country)
• Ricky Hatton (English)
• Andy Murray (Scottish; missed Wimbledon through injury, but is in "the top 10")
• Christine Ohuruogu (English; banned from competing for nearly the entire year because she missed three drug tests in a row!)
• Paula Radcliffe (English; sat out the whole season up to 30th September)
• Jason Robinson (English)
• Justin Rose (English)
• James Toseland (English)
• Jonny Wilkinson (English)

Now, I'm completely against tokenism and I'm not looking for special treatment or some kind of unofficial quota of regional representation, but the fact is David Healy deserves to be there and had he done what he's done in an England shirt, he would be. On top of that, what's the deal with two England rugby players making it? Just because an English side got to a final and the football team were bloody awful? Sheesh!

Needless to say I won't be watching the show at all. In my eyes it has no credibility following this complete mockery of a nomination process.

Surprisingly, Saint Andrew's day is not officially a holiday at present. Why not?

I couldn't figure out at first why my ISP had what at first sight appeared to be an error icon placed on their logo on their site today. I then realised that the strange looking round symbol was a saltire and the figures beside it were some kind of pipers or Scots Guards.

Next to Google where they often decorate their logo on their home page for special days and holidays. Nothing. So a quick search for "saint andrews day" revealed that it was in fact Saint Andrews Day today (me of Scots ancestry too not knowing that: the shame!).

Anyway, it turns out that despite my faint recollection of some English folk complaining that everybody else in the UK gets a holiday on their Saints day but them (maybe I'm blaming them in the wrong), it turns out St Andrews day isn't a holiday in Scotland either - at least not unless you're prepared to swap it for one of your other bank holidays. The Scotsman rightly points out that few would choose a cold, wet November day over a potentially beautiful summers day in August, or a spring holiday in May.

It should be a holiday. The UK as a whole gets less holidays than the rest of the UK so why not create an extra one in each region for the respective saints days?

It's something the Lib Dem-Labour government should have taken on when they had the chance instead of letting the SNP be the ones to bring it forward. While, as someone who believes in the United Kingdom, I find it difficult to trust the motives of the SNP, for once I actually find myself in agreement with Alex Salmond and co., who have promised to make it a national holiday. In fact I even like their idea of a 2-month "winter festival" type thing starting with Saint Andrews Day, taking in Hogmanay and running through to Burns Night (25th January). Apparently they just haven't got round to it yet. It strikes me as odd that they couldn't find time for this but managed to find time to rebrand the Scottish Executive for example. Priorities people!

In her continuing quest to destroy the educations of hundreds of thousands of children, Caitriona Ruane is to change the law so that Northern Ireland's schools can no longer give preference to Northern Ireland-resident children when it comes to allocating places.

She claims the existing law "may" breach EU equality rules. I'm fairly confident that's a downright lie (call me unparliamentary if you will, but there is no excuse for deliberately misleading the public). The EU equality rules deal with race, religion, sexual discrimination etc. In other words you can't discriminate against a person because of who they are. They do not prohibit member nations from providing services for those resident within their own borders.

Just another example of Sinn Fein not only abusing their position but trying to pull a fast one on the public by making some vague, passing reference to equality and passing legislation that has bugger all to do with equality.

Obviously we'll all have to pay the costs for those living in the Republic who want to avail of our education system (it's ok, by the time Ms Ruane has finished with our schools they'll be so bad they'll be running for the border as fast as their legs will carry them anyway). The worst of it is that those worst affected by this will presumably be those who vote for nationalist parties; the kids losing out in all this will be those looking for places in popular schools in the largely nationalist border areas.

Oh and Ms Ruane lives in the Republic but sends her kids to a (grammar!) school in Northern Ireland. So she's got a conflict of interest, I believe she's lying about the equality legislation (and it seems that O'Neill also has his suspicions) and she's a fucking hypocrite to boot! (as well as an ignorant cunt)

Can someone send her back to Colombia?

A possibly rather innocuous comment was made a few days ago at Unionist Lite but I've seen this incorrect claim used on Slugger O'Toole to bait unionist commenters on a number of occasions: something along the lines of "Sure you're all subjects up there, I'm much happier being a citizen... blah, blah."

Well, actually, no we're not. There did exist a class of person known as a British Subject and, while technically it still exists, for all intents and purposes it was abolished long ago.

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As the Northern Ireland football team look to their match away to Spain tonight knowing they must win to have even a chance of qualifying, the Irish Football Association picked up an award in Dublin last night marking the success of it's Football For All program.

As part of the program, in June this year, the IFA launched Football Without Frontiers: a British Isles-wide initiative aimed at getting more people from all ethnic backgrounds involved in local football and helping banish prejudice from the terraces. It was for this specifically that the Irish FA was recognised at the Metro Eireann Media and Multicultural Awards (MAMAs).

A full list of winners is online at the Mama Awards site.

Last night in the markets area in Belfast a group of "about 20" protestors (I presume that's including the kids) disrupted a DPP meeting in south Belfast designed to give people there a voice and a chance to raise issues with and ask qustions of the police.

They reportedly shouted profanities, "jostled" councillors and decried nationalist politicians for administering a "British police force" administering "imperial rule in Ireland".

Meanwhile, two nights previously, 82-year-old pensioner Jack Cassidy was attacked and robbed in his house just off the Andersonstown Road in west Belfast. A gang of four youths forced their way in to his house on Saint Agnes Drive while he was watching the Northern Ireland football team's victory over Denmark. They "manhandled" the pensioner and urinated in his bed and in every room in his house, before making off with money he had withdrawn the previous day to pay the heating bill and money he'd saved for Christmas presents.

Unsurprisingly the pensioner has said he hopes police will step up the number of patrols in the area. I would imagine the priest also robbed in west Belfast at the weekend, and the two robbed in Cookstown last night, might agree.

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It's been over a year since my original look at the Northern Ireland Delivery Rip-Off so, given the popularity of that post, I thought it was past time I looked at the whole matter again. The scenario is simple - I want a small computer peripheral or component delivered to my Northern Ireland address. The problem is most of the companies with the best prices (even accounting for mainland UK delivery costs which are the only ones included in price comparison sites), often have the largest penalties or "surcharges" if you want your items delivered to Northern Ireland. The result is it's difficult to tell who is best for getting individual smaller items delivered to Northern Ireland, so I've done a little investigating.

This time I've added a few extra retailers bringing the total to 13. I've used the same wireless card as last time for the test product (although I don't recommend it, the WG311 is awful; if you need a wireless card try a Linksys WMP54G).

Anyway, here's how the results looked.

Pos.	Retailer	Item Price	Std. Delivery	NI Delivery	Total	Change
* Mplex and Overclock did not stock the Netgear WG311 so similar alternatives are used as the example product. indicates Northern Ireland delivery charge has been reduced since September 2006. indicates Northern Ireland delivery charge has increased since September 2006. NEW indicates the company was not included in the 2006 results.
1	Amazon	£18.99	£0.00	£0.00	£18.99	-
2	Overclock.co.uk *	£18.68	£4.70	£4.70	£23.38	£0.24
3	Mplex *	£15.00	£10.00	£5.00	£20.00	NEW
4	Komplett	£18.51	£6.75	£6.75	£25.26	-
5	Aria	£20.74	£4.69	£4.69	£25.43	NEW
6	Dabs	£19.01	£3.81	£8.51	£27.52	£7.75
7	ebuyer	£18.99	£2.57	£10.27	£29.26	£11.63
8	OCUK	£25.84	£3.51	£3.51	£29.35	£5.95
9	Play.com	£29.99	£0.00	£0.00	£29.99	NEW
10	Misco	£22.31	£4.69	£11.74	£34.05	£5.89
11	Novatech	£19.40	£2.93	£17.03	£36.43	-
12	Scan	£19.92	£7.17	£18.74	£38.66	£0.24
13	Saverstore	£20.15	£3.51	£27.00	£47.15	£9.97

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Pudsey's new look for 2007. What have they done?

Tonight's Children in Need night on BBC, but what the hell have they done to Pudsey? It looks like some wise-ass graphic designer has been let loose on him and decided to assault the poor thing.

Classic Pudsey served BBC Children in Need for 20 years.

The previous Pudsey logo had been used for nearly 20 years but for some reason the BBC have decided to "update" him this year. I'd let them away with the colour-tone change, but that red polkadot bandana-type thing was part of Pudsey, not to mention the fact that someone's butchered the poor bear's face.

Bring back classic Pudsey.

Images © copyright BBC

12 months ago NCP (a private company) took over responsibility for parking enforcement from the PSNI. In the PSNI's last 12 months in charge they handed out 61,488 parking tickets compared to 163,500 tickets handed out in Northern Ireland by NCP in their first year.

As a driver, I may be expected to complain about this (don't get me started on Arlene Foster's nannying), but in fact I welcome it. In fact I suspect it's nowhere near enough, with many drivers abusing double-yellow lines because apparently the rules don't apply to them.

Is it a coincidence that many of these drivers happen to drive big fuck-off monster trucks? You know who you are - the parents who pick their kids up from Methodist College on the Lisburn Road (or any number of schools across the country) who insist on parking their 4x4s on double-yellow lines or the zig-zags at the crossing instead of parking legally down a side street and, god forbid, walking fifty yards or so to meet little Tarquin at the school gate, completely ambivalent to the fact that you're making the journey up the road much more difficult for everyone else, making it more dangerous for kids to cross the road and harder for buses to pull in and out at the bus stop.

In a proposal that could ultimately lead to the demise of one of the world's oldest Football Associations, FIFA's legal committee have suggested that there should be 2 notionally all-Ireland teams: one for Gaelic/Catholic nationalist and republicans and one for Planter Scum/Protestant unionists. Naturally the Irish FA are "seeking clarification".

OK, those weren't FIFA's exact words, but that about sums up the suggested "compromise" which emanated from FIFA's Zurich headquarters last night, running contrary to what was leaked (apparently from the FAI) last week. They suggested that both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland sides (assuming they would still call themselves that) select players born anywhere in Ireland, north or south of the border, effectively creating two all-Ireland teams split along religious/political lines.

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